Summary

Immigration officials threatened us: ‘You don’t
have anything to say here. If you complain we will kill you.’

—30-year-old Congolese man, expelled from Angola in
May 2011

In prison, they beat me a lot because they requested me for
sex and I refused. They were police agents, immigration officials with
different uniforms in black, blue, light green. They came in groups of three
and picked the young women. They beat those who refused with ropes and batons.

—19-year-old Congolese woman, expelled from Angola on
June 2, 2011

Since 2003, the Angolan authorities have carried out a
sustained effort of expelling migrants, most of whom are citizens of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), under the justification of protecting
national security from a “silent invasion.” The annual expulsions
of tens of thousands of migrants have been gradually extended in scope from the
diamond areas in Angola’s east to the border areas in the north, such as
the northern Zaire province and the enclave of Cabinda, as well as to informal
markets and urban residential areas in those regions and elsewhere. Expulsions
have been carried out in a coordinated effort that involves most branches of
the Angolan security forces and increasingly, temporary detention facilities
are being used exclusively for migrants.

This report documents abuses against these immigrants, based
on research conducted by Human Rights Watch during visits to the DRC in 2011,
and during previous visits to Angola in 2009. Women and girls have been
victims of sexual abuse including gang-rape, and of sexual exploitation. Their
children have been forced to witness sexual abuse in custody. Human Rights
Watch also found that beatings, torture and degrading and inhumane treatment of
migrants were common practices during roundups, transportation to detention
facilities and in custody. In addition, Human Rights Watch found that migrants
continued to be rounded up and arrested arbitrarily and denied due process by
effectively being denied the right to challenge their deportation.

Human Rights Watch is particularly concerned that the most
serious abuses that were reported by expelled migrants, including sexual
violence, torture and inhumane treatment, took place in detention facilities
that are under the supervision of Angola’s Interior Ministry, and are
being routinely committed by a broad range of Angolan security forces,
including agents of the Rapid Intervention Police (PIR), the border police
(GPF), prison guards, as well as Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) and immigration
officials (SME).

Though Human Rights Watch found no evidence that Angolan
officials were ordered by their superiors to commit such serious crimes, the
victims’ testimony indicates a high degree of complicity among the
different Angolan security services involved in expulsion operations. These
security officials routinely abused their authority and powers, particularly to
sexually exploit migrant women and girls in their custody, and there is lack of
effective oversight to prevent such abuses from taking place. Information
gathered through interviews with former detainees also suggests that the
deprivation of essential items in custody, including food, water, and
sanitation facilities, even if not deliberate, increases the vulnerability of
migrants, particularly women and girls, to sexual abuse and exploitation, and
exposes female inmates to health risks, such as HIV and other sexually
transmitted infections.

Sexual violence, torture, and degrading and inhumane
treatment are serious violations of international human rights. Women and girls
who are victims of sexual abuse suffer serious physical as well as
psychological trauma, along with their children who are forced to witness
sexual abuse. In addition, sexual violence victims in the DRC are often
socially stigmatized and abandoned by their husbands, while the authorities do
not provide adequate access to health care.

Since 2004 United Nations agencies and special rapporteurs,
international and local nongovernmental organizations, and the African
Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights have presented credible
allegations of serious human rights violations during mass expulsions of
irregular migrants from Angola, including torture and inhumane treatment, theft,
and sexual violence.

Yet, the Angolan government has not carried out any
thorough, credible, and impartial investigations into past allegations of
serious abuse of migrants by its security forces during expulsions from Angola,
has continued to deny the veracity of the allegations, and failed to prosecute
alleged perpetrators.

Following the visit of UN special representative on sexual
violence in conflict, Margot Wallström, to border areas of Angola and the
DRC in early 2011, the Angolan government said it would step up efforts to
prevent serious abuses during expulsions of migrants, by implementing a
zero-tolerance policy among its security forces against sexual abuse, and
increase cooperation with UN agencies to monitor expulsions and train relevant
security forces. The Angolan government has also started building new detention
facilities for migrants, so-called “detention centers for illegal
migrants” in several parts of the country.

Human Rights Watch acknowledges the Angolan
government’s recent commitments to increase effective protection of the
rights of migrants from abuse, particularly the building of new detention
facilities, which opens a window of opportunity to improve detention conditions
and implement an effective oversight. However, the failure of the Angolan authorities
to credibly investigate past abuses and prosecute perpetrators particularly of
sexual violence against women ensures that justice for the victims remains the
exception and impunity for perpetrators the rule.

The Angolan government should also investigate allegations
of cross-border trafficking of women and girls, including sexual abuse and
trafficking for forced prostitution, and prosecute perpetrators.

Recommendations

To the Government of Angola

Carry out a thorough, credible, and impartial
investigation into all allegations of serious abuse, including sexual violence,
torture, degrading and inhumane treatment, and killings against irregular
migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and others during past expulsions. The
government should publish the result, and ensure the prosecution of
perpetrators and responsible officials with oversight responsibility ; and
adopt and implement a no-tolerance policy for sexual violence among
Angola’s security forces;

Investigate allegations of cross-border trafficking of women and
girls, including sexual abuse and trafficking for forced prostitution, and
prosecute perpetrators;

Establish effective accountability and oversight
mechanisms, including complaints mechanisms, to prevent and respond to abuses
in detention facilities and ensure effective protection particularly of women
and children from sexual violence;

Ensure that irregular migrants have the right to
challenge the decision to expel them;

Ensure that all detainees are brought promptly
before a judge after detention, and at regular intervals;

Take steps to improve the living conditions in
detention facilities, including nutrition and health care and make sure
women and children are always held separately from men;

Sign and ratify the Convention on the Protection
of All Migrant Workers and Their Families, and the Convention against
Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and its
Protocol, and take steps to align national legislation regarding migration
with international human rights obligations;

To the Governments of Angola and the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC)

Strengthen bilateral and international
cooperation to prevent, respond to, and prosecute cases of cross-border
trafficking allegations, and provide access to health services for survivors of
sexual and other violence;

Strengthen bilateral cooperation to ensure that
immigration policies and border control mechanisms are designed to respect the
rights of migrants;

To the Government of the Democratic
Republic of the Congo

Ensure that expelled victims of sexual violence
are provided with needed psychological and physical health assistance, as well
as other social services needed for recovery.

To the African
Commission on Human and People’s Rights

Request an invitation for a joint mission to
Angola of the special rapporteur on refugees, asylum seekers, IDPs, and
migrants in Africa, the special rapporteur on prisons and conditions of
detention in Africa; and the special rapporteur on women’s rights in Africa.

To the United Nations

Call on the government of Angola to carry out a
thorough, credible and impartial investigation into sexual violence and other
serious abuses during expulsions of migrants from Angola, to ensure the
prosecution of alleged perpetrators among its security forces, and adopt and
implement effective measures to prevent such abuses;

Call on the government to take concrete steps to
ensure due oversight of detention facilities where migrants are held before
deportation, to ensure all detainees are brought before a judge; to ensure
effective protection of women and children from sexual violence and other
abuses, and to ensure survivors access to health services;

To the United Nations
Human Rights Council

Call on Angola to sign and ratify the Convention
on the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Their Families and the Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
and its Protocol.

Methodology

This report is based on 211 interviews conducted by Human
Rights Watch researchers between July 2009 and December 2011 during visits to
the provinces of Lunda Norte and Cabinda in July 2009 and November 2009, to
Kinshasa and the provinces of Bas-Congo and Kasai-Occidental in the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC) in May and June 2011, and to Luanda, Angola, in
November and December 2011.

One hundred of those interviewed by Human Rights Watch are
migrants, 49 of which women and girls, and 51 men. Human Rights Watch
interviewed very few children directly, but a number of women interviewed were
accompanied by their children, who had been expelled along with them.[1]

In Muanda (Bas-Congo) and in Kamako (Kasai-Occidental),
Human Rights Watch interviewed 57 Congolese expelled from Angola –
predominantly in the first quarter of 2011. Of these interviewees, 32 were
women and girls. Researchers selected most of them from among a large number of
migrants who volunteered to be interviewed, not all of whom were victims of
abuse. However, in a small number of instances, individuals well known within
the host communities and by local nongovernmental organizations as survivors of
sexual abuse were approached by researchers.

Previously, in July 2009
Human Rights Watch interviewed 26 Congolese and other nationals in Dundo and
Nzage (Lunda Norte), 15 of which were men and 11 women. Most of the migrants
interviewed were refugees and asylum seekers who had been released after
temporary arrest and were not expelled. In November 2009 Human Rights Watch
conducted interviews with 17 people, 11 of which were men and six women. This
includes migrants from the DRC and other nationals who had been deported in
October 2009 from Cabinda to the DRC and later returned to Angola, Angolan
nationals who had returned to Cabinda after having been mistakenly expelled as
irregular migrants, as well as Angolans who had been expelled from the DRC in
October 2009. In addition, Human Rights Watch conducted in-depth interviews
with 13 eyewitnesses of abuses during expulsions from Cabinda.

Interviews were conducted in French and Portuguese or were
simultaneously translated by local interpreters from Lingala, Tshiluba, and
Kiswahili.

Human Rights Watch asked all victims, including those who
voluntarily identified members of particular security forces as perpetrators of
abuses, to describe the uniforms of the men involved at different stages of
their expulsion and in abuses, and to provide a detailed description of the
detention facilities and other locations where abuses were committed.

This is particularly relevant because Congolese migrants,
especially women and those who have stayed in Angola for only short periods
tend to refer to Angolan security forces in generic terms, such as
“soldiers”, “police”, or “guards”. Equally,
Congolese migrants often refer to prisons where they were held by their generic
Portuguese name - Unidade (Unit), Cadeia (Prison), or Comando
(Command post). For example, the transit prison, officially called Cadeia
Civil in Cabinda, is often referred to simply as Cadeia. Human
Rights Watch cross-checked, whenever possible, descriptions given by Congolese
migrants with information from local sources in Angola.

In the DRC, Human Rights Watch interviewed 53 local
government officials, representatives of immigration and intelligence agencies,
police officers, civil society representatives, health workers, church
officials, local businessmen, and volunteer humanitarian workers in Bas-Congo
and Kasai-Occidental, as well as civilian officials of the United Nations
Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO)
, representatives of United Nations agencies, and representatives of
international nongovernmental organizations

in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2009 in
Angola, Human Rights Watch interviewed 34 local government officials, civil
society representatives, church officials, traditional authorities, local
businessmen, journalists, representatives of embassies, UN agencies, and
international nongovernmental organizations.

Human Rights Watch also reviewed Angolan and Congolese media
reports, as well as previous reporting on expulsions by UN sources: UN
documents, and the reports of UN-coordinated inter-agency field missions,
reports of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, as well
as the findings of local human rights activists and international humanitarian
organizations – particularly the Belgian chapter of Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF) that documented cases of sexual violence during
expulsions of migrants from Angola, and the nongovernmental organization,
Italian International Committee for the Development of Peoples (CISP), which
have implemented the UN-funded expulsions monitoring project in regions
bordering Angola since April 2011.

In 2009 and in 2011, Human Rights Watch discussed some of
the issues raised in this report with officials from Angola's Interior Ministry
and with representatives of the DRC’s Ministry of
Foreign Affairs.

The evidence gathered during the course of this research
includes accusations of serious human rights violations committed by Angolan
security forces and immigration officials. Many of those interviewed have
family members who have remained in the areas where these abuses took place. Human
Rights Watch has, therefore, withheld names to protect the anonymity and ensure
the security of those concerned.

I. Background

Since 2003, the Angolan
authorities have consistently described the presence of irregular migrants on
Angolan territory as a “silent invasion” that threatens public
order and national security.[2] During the last decade of
Angola’s civil war, which ended in 2002, mining areas in the northeast
served as strongholds of the National Union for the Total Independence of
Angola (UNITA) rebels. Gemstones were trafficked through networks in Zaire[3], and hundreds of thousands of Congolese miners
were hired by Angolan and other mining entrepreneurs and companies during the
early 1990s to work in Angolan alluvial mines.[4]

The first mass expulsion
operation called “Operation Brilhante”, from late 2003 to February
2005, was coordinated alternately by the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) and the
National Police. This operation led to the expulsion of over 300,000 irregular
migrants, according to Angolan authorities, from the provinces of Lunda Norte,
Lunda Sul, Malange and Bié.[5]

The mass expulsion operations have since extended from the
diamond areas to the northern provinces of Zaire and Cabinda and other areas,
which the Angolan authorities believe to be the main entry points for irregular
immigration, and from primarily targeting diamond mines to raiding urban areas
including informal markets, residential areas, churches, and schools.

While the early expulsion operations were carried out mainly
– separately or jointly – by the Angolan Armed Forces and the National
Police, joint operations have since extended to nearly all branches of the
police, including the National Police, the border police, the Rapid
Intervention Police and other branches of the police, at times also Angolan
Armed Forces. All these were being done in coordination with immigration
officials (SME).

In 2004 Congolese human rights activists, international
organizations, and UN agencies including the Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) – at the time still present in Angola –
quickly decried the brutal nature of the expulsions, which were characterized
by widespread beatings, sexual violence and degrading body searches.[6]

In the following years human rights organizations and
humanitarian agencies documented countless cases of beatings, torture, rape,
looting, and degrading treatment committed by Angolan security forces against
migrants, most of them Congolese. In 2007 the Belgian chapter of the relief
organization Médecins Sans Frontières presented evidence that
Angolan police and military had systematically raped and beaten women and girls
during expulsions, and published 100 first-person accounts from victims of
sexual violence.[7]

In October 2009 in reaction to mass expulsions of Congolese
migrants from Angola’s Cabinda and Zaire provinces and amid a rising wave
of popular anger over the humiliating treatment of those expelled, the DRC
government for the first time responded with reciprocal expulsions of Angolan
citizens without regular documentation.

Whereas previous deportation campaigns from Angola to the
DRC had seen the bulk of those expelled sent across remote border areas in the
DRC provinces of Bandundu, Kasai-Occidental, and Katanga, many of those
expelled in 2009 returned to the DRC from Angola via border posts in the much
less isolated Bas-Congo province. Reports of beatings and humiliating treatment
of Congolese nationals expelled to the DRC’s Bas-Congo area by Angolan
security agents in September and October 2009 quickly reached the Congolese
media echoing and fueling resentment against Angolans. Bas-Congo had long
hosted large numbers of Angolan nationals of Cabindan origin as well as a
permanent Angolan military presence at its Kitona army base.

On October 5, Bas-Congo's provincial authorities issued an
ultimatum demanding the departure within 72 hours of Angolans living in the
province without proper documentation.[8]
The following day, the Congolese immigration services, under orders from the
government in Kinshasa, began reciprocal deportations of Angolans.[9]
Previously, on September 27, 2009, in protest against expulsions of citizens
from several nationalities from the enclave of Cabinda to the Republic of the
Congo (ROC), the ROC unilaterally closed its border with Cabinda for a period
of eight days, essentially blockading the enclave by banning vital cross-border
trade.

Though the DRC government claims to have only officially
deported 500 Angolans, while over 8,500 allegedly returned voluntarily[10],
thousands soon arrived home in Angola, many if not most doing so under extreme
duress and often out of fear of reprisal.[11]
According to OCHA, local civilians, particularly in Bas-Congo, committed acts
of violence against Angolan nationals during this period.[12]

In October 2009, official delegations of both countries met
in Kinshasa and both governments eventually agreed to immediately cease
expulsions. But while the agreement did succeed in drastically reducing the
number of deportations in the short term, Angola continued expelling irregular
migrants to the DRC. UN agencies and local nongovernmental organizations
reported serious human rights abuses during expulsions, including sexual
violence against women and girls even after the October 2009 agreement.

The visit of Margot Wallström, the UN Secretary General’s special representative on sexual violence in
conflict to Lunda Norte and the adjacent Congolese province of Kasai Occidental
in early 2011 created a new impetus among the international humanitarian
community based in Kinshasa to deal with the fallout from the almost annual
mass expulsions of Congolese migrants from Angola. A monitoring project of the
expulsions focusing on the protection of migrants was created and financed from
the Pooled Fund.[13]

Launched in March and initially slated to report over a
period of eight months, but extended for another year, the monitoring project
has offered what can reasonably be considered the most accurate picture to date
of the scale of deportations and the prevalence of the abuses associated with
them.

From March 29 to December 31, 2011, the monitoring project
recorded 55,590 expulsions, with peaks confirmed in May and in October 2011.[14]
Of the 55,590 expulsions, the project logged 3,770 reports of sexual and
gender-based violence –rape, gang-rape, sexual coercion, vaginal and anal
body searches without the use of gloves, and sexual humiliation –[15],
affecting 2,526 women, 316 girls, and 928 men. Other recorded protection
incidents include 12, 647 instances of physical abuse – torture, beatings,
imprisonment in degrading conditions and deprivation of food –, 13, 626
cases of prolonged detention, and 12,647 reports of theft.[16]

Expulsions Logistics
since 2010

Since the humanitarian crisis caused in Angola by the
reciprocal expulsions of Angolan migrants from the DRC in 2009, the logistics
of the expulsions of irregular migrants from Angola has become more
sophisticated. In the early expulsions, irregular migrants were marched or
trucked and deported in large waves at a few border posts, often leading to an
immediate humanitarian crisis in border areas in the DRC. However, in recent
years, irregular migrants have been held in custody for varying periods in
detention facilities and jails which were set up or are being used for this
particular purpose, in order to regroup the migrants into smaller numbers for
deportation along different border posts. In addition, the Angolan government
has started to build new “detention centers for illegal migrants”
in several parts of the country.

In the Congolese town of Kamako in June 2011, eyewitnesses
and migrants expelled from Lunda Norte in the first half of 2011 described to
Human Rights Watch a highly organized system of detention centers in Lunda
Norte, some of them used exclusively for the expulsion operations.

A number of migrants described initially being held for
periods ranging from several hours to several days in detention centers, often
simply local jails, near the location of their arrest. However, the
overwhelming majority – 38 of 46 interviewed migrants expelled from 19
different locations in Lunda Norte – were eventually transferred to the
provincial capital of Lunda Norte, Dundo, though in several cases with
additional detention time in intermediary locations. At least 28 of the 46 migrants
interviewed specifically named Condueji in Dundo as their primary detention
center following arrest.[17]

Following a detention
period in Condueji, usually ranging from two days to one week, the migrants
were loaded into trucks and driven from Dundo to the border. Despite the
existence of a well maintained road connecting Dundo to the newly refurbished
Tisanda-Kamako border post, the Angolan authorities distributed the expulsions
between Tisanda-Kamako and the six other smaller ports of entry serving
Tshikapa territory in DRC's Kasai-Occidental province: Tshisenge, Kandjaji,
Kabsakala, Kabungu, Mayanda, and Muamongo.[18]

Similar systems of detention facilities exist in other areas
along the border. In Cabinda, the prison Cadeia Civil, which also includes a
military section, has long been used as a transit center for irregular migrants
before deportation, as well as the border police post N’to.[19]
Angolan immigration services have announced the construction of a number of new
detention centers for illegal foreigners, including a detention center in
Viana, Luanda, to be managed by the immigration services.[20]

This relatively sophisticated system is an improvement on
the previous practice of marching or trucking large groups of migrants directly
to the border until 2009, which often led to border posts being inundated with
thousands of destitute migrants over a short period. The new strategy seems
aimed at limiting the number of deportations at each location to around 100 per
day, ensuring that no single border post is overwhelmed pursuant to previous
agreements between the two countries.

While Human Rights Watch recognizes the potential value of
such a system in mitigating the humanitarian impact of expulsions on Congolese
border areas, the fact that victims’ accounts described the currently
used detention facilities as the scene of some of the most serious human rights
violations documented in this report, raises concern.

Patterns of Congolese
Migration to Angola

Despite repeated reports indicating the use of systematic
violence by Angolan security forces, aimed at punishing irregular migrants and
discouraging their return, the expulsions from Angola have failed in their
primary goal of stopping undocumented immigration. This failure is the result
of both historical factors and the radical economic inequities that currently
exist between the two countries.

The largely arbitrary manner in which the borders between
DRC and Angola were drawn during the colonial period has meant that communities
with common customs and language have found their traditional territories
bisected by national boundaries. Since government regulation of cross-border
traffic has historically been lax, most local inhabitants grew accustomed to bypassing
official border posts in favor of well-trodden bush paths when visiting family
and friends.[21]

Local commerce also continued largely unhindered despite the
theoretical imposition of state regulation, and communities straddling the
border remained heavily interdependent. To this day, Angolan and Congolese
villagers come together to trade in goods and livestock at a series of
cross-border markets. Along the frontier between Lunda Norte in Angola and
Kasai-Occidental and Bandundu provinces in DRC – a section of the border
that is officially closed –security forces, local government officials,
and immigration agents turn a blind eye to the technically illegal markets.[22]

After the end of Angola's long civil war in 2002, as oil
revenues from offshore discoveries were beginning to pump hundreds of millions
of dollars into Angola’s state coffers, the DRC remained engulfed in a
deadly armed conflict. The increasing economic gap between Angola and the DRC
has since provided an incentive for Congolese migrants to brave the likelihood
of abuse in the hopes of a better life.

Today, while miners still make up the bulk of Congolese in
Angola, the country's booming economy also attracts thousands of other migrants
including, among others, small-time traders, construction laborers, and sex
workers. Congolese influence in commerce, for example, has meant that Lingala
– the most widely spoken language in western DRC – has now become
the lingua franca of many public marketplaces in Angola. Many migrants travel
as far as the capital, Luanda, in search of employment.

An entire industry of facilitators – known in Kasai
Occidental as tchobresseurs – has sprung up in border areas to
cater to the constant demand of Congolese seeking to enter Angola
clandestinely. The facilitators generally operate with little interference from
the authorities, benefiting from the involvement of officials from the civilian
authorities and state security forces on both sides of the border.[24] In
Kasai Occidental they have even established a professional syndicate. For a fee
ranging from just a few dollars to over US$100, these tchobresseurs,
usually local inhabitants of Congolese frontier towns, lead migrants across the
border via extensive networks of unmapped hunting trails and footpaths.[25] In some
cases these guides appear to be part of cross-border networks recruiting labor
for Angolan diamond mines, many of which are controlled by FAA officers.[26]

Members of civil society organizations and local government
officials in Kamako told Human Rights Watch that networks of tchobresseurs
were also involved in the smuggling and trafficking of women and girls into
Angola for the purpose of prostitution, at times at the request of members of
Angolan security forces, with the Congolese intermediaries receiving a
commission for each Congolese woman or girl delivered. Local officials also
told Human Rights Watch that some of these women and girls are raped by their tchobresseur
guides while crossing the border.[27]

II.
Angola’s Legal Obligations

International law

Angola is bound by international human rights law that
requires it to prevent, investigate and punish acts of sexual violence,
torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and guarantees particular
protection to women and children from rape and other forms of sexual abuse. The
Angolan government has an obligation to prevent, investigate, prosecute, and
punish sexual violence. The obligation includes ensuring that State actors,
such as the security forces, do not commit such violence and should take all
reasonable steps to provide everyone within its territory with effective
protection against such violence by private parties.

Angola is party to a number of major human rights treaties,
including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),[28] the
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)[29], the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
(CEDAW)[30],
and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which contains the obligation
to detain children separately from adults.[31]
Angola is also party to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights,
which prohibits mass expulsions of non-nationals when those targeted are
national, racial, ethnic, or religious groups.[32]
Angola has also ratified, and is therefore bound by, the African Charter on the
Rights and Welfare of the Child and the Protocol to the African Charter on the
Rights of Women in Africa.[33]

International human rights law also enshrines the right to
an effective remedy, which obligates state parties to prevent, investigate, and
punish serious human rights violations.[34]

Angola still has not ratified the Convention against Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment nor its Optional
Protocol that establishes a framework for independent monitoring of detention
conditions in the country.[35]
Neither has Angola ratified the International Convention on the Protection of
the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families,[36] which
prohibits “collective expulsion”
of migrant workers and members of their families.[37] The
convention requires state parties to carry out expulsions on a case to case
basis and “only in pursuance of a decision taken by the competent
authority and in accordance with the law.”[38]
The convention equally gives migrants subject to expulsion the right to review
and to compensation in case of the annulment of a judicial expulsion decision.[39]
Most importantly, the convention requires the authorities to respect
fundamental right of migrants, their spouses and children during imprisonment,
including providing treatment that is appropriate their age.[40]
Angola still has not ratified the Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants by
Land, Sea and Air, (Smuggling Protocol),[41] nor the
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially
Women and Children (Trafficking Protocol)[42].

Angola has been a member of the United Nations Human Rights
Council since 2007. Before being elected member of the UN Human Rights Council
for two three-year terms, in May 2007 and in May 2010, Angola in its voluntary
pledges to the UN secretary general stated that it would accelerate the
ratification process of those conventions and protocols, among others.[43] This
promise remains unfulfilled.

Angolan domestic law

The Angolan constitution that entered into force on February
5, 2010 guarantees all fundamental freedoms and rights, and enshrines the
principle of equality and non-discrimination.[44]
Angola’s constitution also states that “Constitutional and legal
norms related to fundamental rights shall be interpreted and integrated
harmoniously with the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and other international
instruments to which Angola is party.”[45]

The 2007 Law on the Legal Regime of Foreign Citizens,
guarantees foreigners in Angola the same rights and duties as Angolan citizens,
except some political rights and other rights and duties reserved for Angolan
citizens, such as holding public office, or leading a trade union or
professional association.[46]
The law guarantees that expulsions of non-nationals are carried out
“without prejudice of agreements and international conventions to which
Angola is party”.[47]

However, the 2007 law contains no clear safeguards for due
process during expulsions. The law establishes a distinction between the
expulsion of non-nationals by judicial order and an administrative order issued
by the Interior Ministry’s Migration and Foreigners Service. Foreign citizens
may be subject to administrative expulsion for lack of means of subsistence,
trade or profession; failure to pay fines; entering a work contract without due
authorization; unlawful re-entry in the country; and failure to comply with an
order to leave Angola voluntarily.[48]
Foreign citizens may be subject to judicial expulsion for using fraudulent
means to enter the country, undermining national security or internal order,
breaching restrictions on leading a trade union or professional association,
seriously or repeatedly breaching Angolan laws, or being sentenced to a major
prison term.[49]

Non-nationals ordered to be expelled by court decision have
the right to appeal to the courts, while those who are expelled by
administrative decision can only appeal to the Ministry of Interior. Most
Angolan security forces - Rapid Intervention Police, border police, National
Police and Immigration services – which are involved in expulsion
operations and who have allegedly committed serious abuses during roundups, arrest,
and detention fall under the authority of the Ministry of Interior.

The 2007 law establishes harsh punitive measures – up
to eight years imprisonment -for trafficking, employing and assisting irregular
migrants, including providing lodging for irregular migrants.[50]

According to the 2007 law all foreign citizens subject to
expulsion are to be detained until their deportation,[51] for a
maximum period of eight days (for non-resident foreigners)[52] in a
“detention center for illegal foreigners,”[53]
that is to be set up and operated under the responsibility of the Ministry of
Interior.[54]
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in its 2008 Angola mission report
criticized the compulsory detention of foreigners before expulsion, instead of
detention being an exception.[55]

In addition to its obligations under international law,
Angola has a duty under its own laws to prevent and punish acts of sexual
violence.

In June 2011, Angola’s new law against domestic
violence entered into force. For the first time, the law specifically
criminalizes acts of sexual violence.[56]
The law defines sexual violence – more broadly than in previous
legislation – as “any conduct that obliges to witness, have or
participate in a sexual act by way of coercion, threat or placing the person in
a situation of unconsciousness or impossibility to resist,”[57]and
establishes any “serious offense against the physical or psychological
integrity” as a public crime.[58]
The new draft Criminal Code, which has yet to be approved in parliament,
includes the same definition of sexual violence as in the domestic violence
law, and establishes prison terms up to 10 years for sexual aggression with
penetration.[59]

III. Sexual Violence

Previous reports by local NGOs, the UN and international nongovernmental
organizations such as MSF, as well as the current UN-funded monitoring project
have called attention to the high occurrence of sexual violence during
expulsions of irregular migrants from Angola.

In early 2011, Margot Wallström, the UN
Secretary-General's special representative on sexual violence in conflict, who
traveled to Lunda Norte and the adjacent Congolese province of Kasai-Occidental
in early 2011, reported that her findings “strongly suggest that sexual
violence is systematically being carried out against Congolese women and
girls... by uniformed security forces.” She stated that many of the
victims she'd spoken to had affirmed that the sexual abuses had occurred while
they were being held in detention facilities.[60]
Human Rights Watch research corroborates Wallström’s findings. The
high prevalence of sexual violence against migrants was also confirmed by the
UN-funded expulsions monitoring project, which recorded 3,770 reports of sexual
and gender-based violence in 55,590 expulsions from Angola between April and
December 2011.[61]

Patterns and
perpetrators of sexual abuse

Of the 32 expelled
female Congolese migrants interviewed in Kamako and Muanda in the DRC in May
and June 2011, 19 said they had been subjected to sexual abuse, including rape,
attempted rape, sexual coercion, and being forced to witness sexual violence
against other women. Most of them reported to Human Rights Watch that the
incidents of sexual violence took place in detention facilities. In addition,
some children witnessed sexual violence and other abuses against their mothers
as they were usually held in the same cells.

Not all survivors were able to identify the prison where the
abuses were committed.[62]
However, expelled migrants interviewed in Kamako clearly identified the prison
Condueji in Dundo, Lunda Norte’s provincial capital (in Angola at times
also spelled as Conduege), as one of the places where they suffered sexual
violence. Most expelled migrants interviewed in Kamako who had been arrested in
Dundo, Lukapa, Nzage, Calonda or in several diamond mines in Luanda Norte
province, were eventually transferred to Condueji prison in Dundo, where they
spent up to a week until their deportation.[63]Victims also reported sexual violence in
other detention facilities in Lunda Norte, such as police jails in Lukapa and
Nzage,[64] in a
jail in Calonda, and in Zaire province in a jail reportedly run by the Angolan
Armed Forces (FAA) in Soyo city.[65]

The accounts obtained by Human Rights Watch suggest that no
due oversight exists to ensure effective prevention and protection from sexual
abuse by members of the security forces and prison guards. The victims gave
detailed descriptions of the perpetrators’ uniforms and the types of arms
they were carrying. Such descriptions matched that of a wide range of Angolan
security forces, including the migration services (SME), the Rapid Intervention
Police (PIR), the border police (PGF), prison guards, and Angolan Armed Forces
(FAA).

Most women interviewed in May and June 2011, including those
who said they had not been victims of sexual abuse themselves, reported
witnessing the rapes and sexual coercion of other women by security officials.
They said that these officials beat or used threats of beating to coerce women
into having sex with them.

According to a consistent pattern throughout the
victims’ and witnesses’ accounts, the perpetrators included members
of security forces routinely present at the prison, as well as prison guards,
immigration officials, at times also PIR agents, and others such as border
police, visited prisons in groups. Some apparently came for the specific
purpose of sexually abusing women, by either promising food or release in
exchange for sex or, in case of refusal, beating them or threatening them with
beatings or death.

The often appalling prison conditions – overcrowded
cells, lack of food, drinking water and sanitation facilities – as well
as the fact that many women were detained along with their children,
contributed to the pressure on victims to submit to sexual abuse, according
to victims and other witnesses.

Several women and girls told Human Rights Watch that they
had sex with members of the security forces after having been beaten up in
front of their fellow inmates each time they refused, or out of desperation to get
food for themselves or their children. Among the interviewed survivors, a
30-year-old Congolese woman told Human Rights Watch that immigration officials
forced her to have sex with them despite her being eight months pregnant.[66] Most of
these sexual abuses were committed by members of different security forces and
immigration officials at the prison of Condueji in Dundo.

One 30-year-old Congolese woman told Human Rights Watch how
groups of security agents, including from the Rapid Intervention Police, beat
her and other women to force them to have sex with them.

In the prison they beat us when we refused to have sex with
them. They kicked us with their boots in the belly. This hurts terribly.
Particularly the émergence [PIR agents] did this. They came in
groups of 20 or 30 to ask for girls. We were 147 women in a cell and had
nothing to eat, nothing to wash ourselves. We were not able to sleep. After we
suffered a lot, they would come to take us.[67]

A 19-year-old Congolese woman told Human Rights Watch that
immigration officials and security agents wearing different uniforms beat those
women in the prison of Condueji who refused to have sex with them.

We were four women, a man, and a baby in the cell. They
beat me a lot because they requested me for sex and I refused. They were police
agents, DEF [SME agents], with different uniforms in black, blue, light green.
They came in groups of three and picked the young women. They beat those who
refused with ropes and batons.[68]

A 27-year-old Congolese woman told Human Rights Watch that
security agents in different uniforms forced her and other women in the prison
of Condueji to have sex with them in exchange for biscuits for their children.

We were 73 women and 27 children in the cell. The
‘military’ disturbed us all the time to have sex with us. They had
different uniforms, khaki, and green, blue, black. Women accepted due to the
suffering. There was nothing to either eat or drink or water to wash. Sometimes
they brought biscuits for the children, but only for the women who accepted
having sex with them. I finally accepted to have sex with a soldier in a khaki
uniform because of the hunger. He gave me biscuits. But I hurt a lot from the
rape.[69]

A number of male Congolese detainees told Human Rights Watch
they witnessed agents of different security services coercing women with
beatings to leave the cell with them and the women later came back visibly
hurt. One man told Human Rights Watch:

We were men and women together in a big cell. Agents of the
PIR, police and DEF [migration services SME] who were running the prison would
come and take women out. They pointed at them and said ‘You! Get
up.’ There were some women who refused, but they beat them severely in
front of us. I don’t know what happened to those who left the cell. But
after they came back, they could hardly walk.[70]

Some victims told Human Rights Watch they were sexually
abused outside of the prison cell, either in a corner of the corridor or in a
room in a separate house near the main building. Others told Human Rights Watch
they or their fellow female inmates were forced to have sex with members of the
Angolan security forces within the cell, in front of other inmates and their
own children. The similarity of victims’ accounts of sexual violence in
custody suggests that such abuses are being committed routinely.

A 30-year-old Congolese woman told Human Rights Watch that
immigration officials, prison guards, and other uniformed men raped her and
other women in the presence of her husband and her three under-aged children in
a cell of the Condueji prison, Dundo, in early June 2011.

I was in a small cell with my husband, my three small
children and, two other women and another man. Two DEF [SME agents] came into
the cell and raped me, in the presence of my husband and my children. I was
raped twice, the second time by prison guards. My husband was afraid. They beat
him in front of my children. My children cried and they slapped them. The other
two women in the cell were also raped within the cell. I couldn’t
identify the men. They were many, wearing different uniforms.[71]

A 23-year-old Congolese woman, who was not raped herself,
told Human Rights Watch how 10 children were forced to witness how agents of
different security forces raped their mothers in a cell of Condueji prison.

We were 57 women and 10 children in a cell. Men came all
the time, day and night, requesting sex from women. They came in groups of
three or four. They raped some women. All this happened in the same cell. The
children saw everything and cried a lot. I resisted, and a police agent kicked
me in my belly.[72]

A 32-year-old Congolese woman told Human Rights Watch that
immigration officials, agents of the border police and Rapid Intervention
Police gang-raped her and other women in the presence of their children in a
police jail in Lukapa:

We were 18 women and 8 small children in a cell. Men came
all the time to demand sex from women. They had different uniforms, blue,
khaki, black, there were DEF[SME agents] as well. They shared us among
them, in turns: first the DEF, then the Chacals [special unit of the
border police], then the émergence [PIR agents]. If you refused
they beat you with whips. They raped us inside the cell and told us simply to
close our eyes. The children who were with us cried a lot.[73]

Human Rights Watch also documented one case of rape of a
girl and witnesses told us about other girls who had been raped by security
officials. A 15-year-old Congolese girl who was gang-raped along with her aunt,
identified their rapists in the Condueji prison in May 2011 as immigration
officials. She told Human Rights Watch:

Three men took me from the cell to a house nearby. They had
trousers in dark blue. There they undressed me. My aunt had implored them to
leave me alone, but they slapped her. I had never been with a man before and
suffered a lot. I cried, but once the first finished the next came over to me
right afterwards. One of them had raped my aunt before. Afterwards I had
pain in my abdomen. When we left for the border other girls in my age said the
same had happened to them.[74]

In July 2009, Human
Rights Watch also documented five cases of sexual violence, committed by
members of the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) against women of a camp community of
refugees and asylum seekers in Nzage, Lunda Norte province in the early morning
of May 24, 2009. Human Rights Watch interviewed residents of the camp,
who were released after being transported to a temporary detention camp, where
several thousand foreigners arrested by the FAA and police were being held in
custody for several days before deportation. As interviewed camp residents told
Human Rights Watch, a group of soldiers beat and raped the women in their homes
upon their arrest, some of them in the presence of their children. A 27-year-old woman described being gang-raped by soldiers:

Five soldiers came to our house in the middle of the night.
They beat me and my husband. They took him out and when I was alone in the
house with my three children. Five soldiers raped me. I tried to defend myself
but they cut me in my hand with a machete. My children witnessed everything.[75]

Human Rights Watch found no evidence that Angolan
immigration officials and members of the security forces committed the above
described acts of sexual violence against Congolese irregular migrants in
custody or elsewhere during expulsion operations upon the orders of their
superiors. However, the pattern of sexual violence committed by groups of
different security forces, particularly those acts of sexual violence committed
in detention facilities, suggests a high degree of complicity between members
of the different Angolan security services involved in expulsion operations.
They routinely abused their authority and powers to sexually exploit Congolese
women in their custody.

Human Rights Watch found no evidence that Angolan security
agents would deliberately deny detainees essential items, including food and
water. However, survivors’ accounts strongly suggest that the lack of
food or water, coupled with threats of beatings, increased the vulnerability of
women to sexual abuse by security agents while in detention.

Migrant women and children were usually held separately from
the men. However, in some instances, they have been held together. Under international
law, children must be detained separately from adults in order to protect them
from abuse and exploitation by fellow detainees. International standards also
require that women must be held separately from men.

Impact of sexual
violence on survivors

In addition to the physical and psychological trauma of
sexual violence, survivors are often traumatized by the negative attitude of
their family towards them. Human Rights Watch, through interviews with victims,
health workers, and local organizations in the DRC has confirmed that the
social stigma attached to sexual violence victims in the DRC, in addition to
the lack of free medical assistance, often discourages victims from reporting
their case to the authorities or seeking medical care.

A health official told Human Rights Watch in Muanda that
victims tend to remain silent unless the degree of physical injuries obliges
them to visit a hospital.[76] In one
particularly serious case, a 26-year-old Congolese woman who was raped during
her expulsion from Cabinda province in January 2011, allegedly by five Angolan
police agents, suffered a miscarriage after she arrived in Muanda and later
died at the Muanda central hospital.[77]

Several survivors of sexual violence told Human Rights Watch
their husbands had since divorced them for having been raped, or because they
simply assumed that they must have been raped. According to one victim, her
husband divorced her “because men know women are raped at the prison I
was in.”[78]

IV.
Beatings, Torture, Degrading and Inhumane Treatment

In Kamako and Muanda in the DRC in 2011, as well as in
Cabinda and in Lunda Norte in 2009, Human Rights Watch received numerous victim
and eyewitness accounts of mistreatment, torture, and degrading and inhumane
treatment of migrants by Angolan security forces during expulsion operations.
Thirty-seven out of 57 migrants that Human Rights Watch interviewed in Kamako
and Muanda in May and June 2011 reported that they were victims of at least one
beating at the hands of personnel from Angola's security and immigration
services, while 43 of the 57 witnessed others being beaten.

A number of migrants Human Rights Watch interviewed in
Kamako in June 2011 said that immigration officials, border police, and other
security forces threatened them and said, “If you come back we will kill
you.”

In Lunda Norte and in Cabinda in 2009, nearly all migrants,
as well as Angolans mistakenly targeted by expulsion operations, and
eyewitnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, claimed to have been victims or
eyewitnesses to violence by Angolan security officials. Such violence occurred
during roundup and arrest operations, during transportation into detention
facilities and in custody.

Excessive violence
during roundup and arrest operations

During roundups in diamond mines in Lunda Norte, victims and
other witnesses later described how Angolan security forces – usually
armed with machetes, whips, knotted lengths of rope and bayonets –
routinely use beatings to quell resistance and subdue their targets for arrest,
as well as to take their money. Congolese diamond diggers interviewed by Human
Rights Watch in Kamako in June 2011 described how agents of the PIR and a
special unit of the border police known as the Chacal[79], at times accompanied by immigration
officials, typically arrived suddenly in a location, often firing live
ammunition,[80] and then
threatened, physically assaulted, and tied up those present.

A 28-year-old Congolese man described how security agents
mistreated him and other migrants upon their arrest at a diamond mine:

They arrested us in the
mine in Chingufo. People started to get nervous, and we realized they were
there. There were 10 of them. They were émergence [agents of
PIR]. Their uniforms were black and they had AK-47s. They had knives. It was a
big mine, and there were lots of diggers. They arrested 17, and the others
fled. I tried to run too, but I got a thorn in my foot. They pretended that
they were going to stab me, and when I ducked they pulled their guns out and
made like they were going to shoot me. So I stopped, and they arrested me. They
started punching me, and kicking me, and hitting me with their rifles. Some of
us were injured. Some had their eyes swollen up.[81]

A 36-year-old Congolese man described how border police
agents from the Chacal unit beat and robbed him upon arrest at a diamond
mine:

There were five Chacals who came to the mine. I
could tell by their uniforms. They wore khaki green. They surrounded the mine
and then entered. I had 2,800 Kwanzas, and they took it. I tried to protest. Then
they stabbed me in the legs with a bayonet attached to an AK-47. They arrested
nine of us. They tied up the others, but not me because I was wounded.[82]

While a number of migrants arrested in diamond mines claimed
that security forces only beat those who tried to flee or resist, Human Rights
Watch documented some cases of extreme violence and torture. In one case, a
Congolese diamond digger told Human Rights Watch that border police burned him
and 30 others with hot machetes as a punishment after having arrested them in a
mine in Calumbia, Lunda Norte in April 2011.

He told Human Rights Watch:

We had gone to the mine and started to work. The
‘soldiers’ came around noon. It was the Chacal division.
They said 'We are the jackals, the animals of the forest.' I'd never heard of
them before. There were three land cruisers full of them. They shot in the air
and arrested people. Each ‘soldier’ had his gun, his bayonet and
his machete. Thirty of us were arrested in the mine. They loaded us in a truck,
and took us to their post in the forest. It wasn't far from our mine. It was
set up for this. It wasn't permanent. They tied us up. Our elbows touched
behind our backs. And our elbows touched our feet. They started heating their
machetes. They said 'Now we’re going to give you the seal of Congo.' They
blindfolded us and touched us with the machetes some on the arms, some on their
backs. And for me it was only on my arm. They did that to 30 people.[83]

Whereas the victims of violence during arrest operations in
Lunda Norte’s diamond mines are overwhelmingly male, the urban roundups
saw a higher proportion of abuses committed by Angolan security forces against
women. The women typically remain in towns and villages, often working in
local markets, while the men go to work in nearby diamond mines. In some cases,
children witnessed this violence as female migrants are often accompanied by
under-aged children. Migrants told Human Rights Watch in Kamako in June 2011
that immigration officials and security agents involved in the expulsion
operations in May and June 2011 in Lunda Norte systematically carried out
beatings and other forms of physical violence during urban raids on public
marketplaces, bus stops and in door to door operations in neighborhoods where
Congolese were known to reside.

A 26-year-old Congolese woman described how security agents
mistreated her and her children upon arrest:

They arrested me in the market in Dundo. They wore green
uniforms and had AK-47s. There were seven of us women, including four with
children. They didn't ask for our documents, they only said 'Never set foot in
Angola again. Stay in Congo.' They hit us with chains. They threw us in a
truck...the children too, like they were sacks.[84]

In Cabinda, most reported mass roundup operations of
irregular migrants in September and October 2009 took place in urban areas.
Victims and eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that they were subjected to
excessive violence during arrest operations, particularly by agents of the
border police. As an Angolan from Cabinda told Human Rights Watch, border
police agents beat him and arrested him on October 10, 2009 as punishment for
having intervened on behalf of a Congolese woman, whom the agents were severely
beating in the street. He told Human Rights Watch:

While I was standing at the entrance of my shop, I saw a
border police agent beating a Congolese woman, a neighbor of mine, injuring her
head. I went there and criticized the agents. One of them threw me to the
ground. They tore my shirt and kicked me with their boots and said: ‘You
have nothing to do with what we are doing.’ They arrested me and put me
in the bus. The bus was full of people, I could hardly breathe. There were
people injured from the beatings with clubs and rifle butts, pregnant women,
babies, all together. There was blood on the floor. They took us to N’to [85]where
immigration officials separated me from the others. I was released on the next
day.

Another Angolan born in Cabinda told Human Rights Watch that
border police agents, confusing him with a Congolese, severely injured his face
with the butt of a rifle.

I was going to my workplace in the morning on September 21,
2009, when two agents of the border police stopped and asked me where I was
from. I told him the village, but they said they had never heard of that
village and I was lying. An agent of the border police hit me with the butt of
his rifle and cut my lips. I cried and they left. I complained at the criminal
investigation police. They asked me for my identity card, but I don’t
have any, just a birth certificate. I was treated in the hospital. I
couldn’t eat for six days, I couldn’t open my mouth.[86]

In Lunda Norte, residents of the refugee camp in the Chico
Guerreiro neighborhood of Nzage told Human Rights Watch in July 2009 that the
FAA soldiers systematically mistreated them during a roundup operation of the
entire camp on May 24, 2009, punching and slapping them, kicking them with
their boots and beating them with clubs, the dull side of machetes and the
butts of their rifles.[87]

Excessive violence
during transportation to detention facilities

Migrants interviewed in Kamako and Muanda
in June 2011 told Human Rights Watch that the beatings continued as security
forces and migration officials transported them to the various prisons, jails,
or improvised facilities where they would await deportation. In Lunda Norte,
migrants were transported in large Kamaz trucks, in Cabinda in buses or cars.
One 30-year-old woman described how immigration officials mistreated her and
other migrants upon arrest at a market in Nzage:

They were 25 agents from the DEFwith
white shirts, black epaulettes and black trousers. They arrested 70 of us. They
said, 'We are from the DEF.' They beat many people. They had guns and hit
people with the butts of their rifles. They also used their belts and clubs.
They tied us up and loaded us into trucks. Our arms were tied behind our backs
and our feet were tied together. For the men they even attached [tied] their
elbows to their feet. The trip took most of the day. We were arrested at 7 a.m.
and we arrived at 2 p.m. They were beating people in the trucks, especially the
men, but also the women. But they left me alone, because I was pregnant. There
were people injured. There was one who was injured on his face from a rifle
butt. Another broke his arm. Others had marks from the ropes.[88]

A 26-year-old Congolese woman described how
border police agents of the Chacal unit mistreated her and other
migrants while they were being transported from Nzage to Dundo.

Chacals
arrested me at home in Nzage. It was an operation in the whole neighborhood.
They took us on a pick-up to theDEF [immigration services SME] prison
in Dundo. We were many, men and women. During the transport they beat us with
clubs and whips. Some of us were injured.[89]

Beatings, degrading and
inhumane treatment, and denial of food in custody

While a number of migrants interviewed told
Human Rights Watch they hadn’t suffered any form of beating in custody,
many migrants said they were beaten and verbally assaulted by security agents
in detention. As the following statement of a 30-year-old Congolese diamond
entrepreneur illustrates,security forces
violently punished migrants and discouraged them from returning to
Angola:

We spent four days in the cells at
Calonda. There, more than 10 PIR whipped us and beat us with batons and the
dull sides of their machetes. There were many injured. One of my legs was
swollen. The fourth day we were taken in a KAMAZ to Dundo, where we spent three
days in the Condueji prison. We were 470 in a big cell. There were 30 women and
15 children. There was nothing to eat, only a cup of water once a day. Each
night they beat us. It was always the same two who came and beat us with
batons. They also beat the women. The DEFagents said 'You are thieves.
You have no say here.' 'If you complain, we can kill you.' And 'You must be
beaten severely.' We suffered a lot. Many fell sick, me as well. People fell
down, vomited, nobody came to clean up.[90]

Several migrants interviewed by Human
Rights Watch in Kamako in June 2011 – men and women alike –
spoke of being subjected to humiliating and painful body cavity searches of
their rectum or vaginas carried out manually by immigration officers, police
and prison guards looking for hidden diamonds and cash.[91]In most cases these were done with little regard for basic hygiene
– either without using gloves or using the same gloves for several
detainees, and in several cases in front of other detainees. As a 36-year-old
Congolese man told Human Rights Watch, he was first subjected to a cavity
search shortly after his arrest in Calonda and then a second time after his
transfer to Condueji prison in Dundo:

When I arrived at the post of the PIR,
police and DEF [immigration services SME] in Calonda, they searched me and beat
me. They used clubs. My arms were swollen. They hit me on my back, and on my
buttocks. They said, 'We asked you to go home. You don't go home, and you keep
coming back. Then they put me in a cell. I was in the jail in Calonda for five
days. I was searched before I was put in the cell. They took all my money. They
took my two telephones. They even searched people in the cells. For the women,
they put plastic bags over their hands and inserted their hands into their
vaginas. For the men, they put their hands in their anuses. They did that to
me. Then they brought us out and put us in KAMAZ and drove us to Condueji
prison in Dundo. It was run by the DEF and the police. There, they searched us
again. They gave me a body cavity search there again. They beat us there too.[92]

In November 2009, a number of victims and eyewitnesses
described systematic beatings by border police at the N’to border post in
Cabinda to Human Rights Watch. As a 23-year-old Congolese man said:

In N’to they put us in a warehouse. I stayed there
three days. There was no food. Many people fainted from hunger. The border
police beat us all with metal clubs. When we were arrested it was the DEF who
beat us, at N’to the border police.[93]

In a particular incident of degrading treatment, security
agents at the Cadeia Civil in Cabinda in October 2009 punished and detained
migrants who protested after having been forced by migration officials to clean
up feces on a patio. An Angolan eyewitness held at the same prison told Human
Rights Watch:

On October 16, the men from DEFA [immigration services SME]
told the migrants to clean up the public space that serves as toilet behind the
annex of the patio. They gave us a broom and a bucket. They promised to release
us afterwards. But after the work they brought us back to the cells. The next
day, the detainees protested in the patio because they wanted to go back to
their country. The DEFA called policemen and one FAA soldier who beat all on
the palms of their hands with sticks. They also beat two women.[94]

Nearly all expelled migrants interviewed either in Muanda or
Kamako in 2011 and in Cabinda and Lunda Norte in 2009 complained of
receiving no or insufficient food and water while in detention - usually small
quantities of rice or fufu.[95]Most
migrants, including women who were detained with small children and pregnant
women told Human Rights Watch that they received no food or water for several
days.

In addition to the lack of food and water, the overwhelming
majority of migrants interviewed in 2009 and 2011 told Human Rights Watch about
lack of basic sanitation in the detention facilities. Migrants described fetid
cells with floors covered in urine and feces. In most cases, detainees were
forced to urinate and defecate in front of their cellmates. These detention
conditions caused a variety of health problems, including for small children
and babies.

Reports of killings

Since 2007, local NGOs,
humanitarian agencies and UN agencies based in the DRC have been inundated with
alleged reports of unlawful killings and other deaths incidental to roundups,
detention, and expulsions of irregular migrants, particularly in Angola’s
diamond areas in Lunda Norte.[96]These incidents are generally very
difficult to verify, as they occur in Angola and are mostly reported by
Congolese migrants after being deported.[97]

Since late 2010, there
have been accounts of killings and incidental deaths of artisanal diamond
miners in the hands of Angolan security forces during raids on mines in the
vicinity of Kalonda town in Lunda Norte. An UN inter-agency mission[98]and CISP-supported monitors gathered evidence of
two incidents during which up to 30 migrants apparently died either from
gunshot wounds or from drowning during panicked flight.[99]Human Rights Watch was unable to
corroborate allegations of expelled migrants about killings during roundups.[100]

The Angolan human rights researcher and activist Rafael
Marques recently documented 106 cases of serious human rights abuses, including
rape, torture, and killings of Angolan alluvial diamond miners and other local
civilians, perpetrated by members of the Angolan Armed Forces and private
security companies in Lunda Norte between 2009 and 2011.[101]This
indicates a much broader pattern of serious human rights violations and
impunity in Angola’s diamond areas affecting migrants and local
communities alike.

V.
Arbitrary Arrest and Denial of Due Process

The overwhelming majority of victims of expulsion –
either migrants or nationals mistakenly taken for migrants – as well as
eyewitnesses Human Rights Watch interviewed in the DRC in 2011 and in Angola in
2009 and 2011 reported that Angolan officials arrested them arbitrarily in
roundups or door-to-door operations without showing an arrest warrant, without
due examination of documents, and without possibility of challenging their
arrest. Once arrested, most were immediately transported by van, bus or car to
a detention facility to await deportation, or in a number of cases were driven
directly to the border.

Most migrants interviewed
by Human Rights Watch in Kamako and Muanda in May and June 2011 admitted that
they lacked required documents allowing them to reside in Angola.[102]
Most said that immigration officials asked them to present their documents
before arresting them. Yet, those who claimed to possess valid documents told
Human Rights Watch that Angolan security agents confiscated them upon their
arrest. Some said they asked to fetch their documents from their homes, but
Angolan officials denied them this opportunity. Human Rights Watch also spoke
with several women who said that Angolan officials prevented them from fetching
their babies and under-aged children left at home. [103]

In 2009, Human Rights Watch received numerous accounts of
how during the September and October expulsions in Cabinda city, immigration
officials and border police agents routinely confiscated documents from
migrants as well as Angolans mistakenly taken for migrants.[104] Victims
and eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that armed border police agents conducted
violent roundups in informal markets, in the street, as well as in churches,
schools and residences, without ever exhibiting an arrest warrant, and simply
ripped up or confiscated the documents presented to them. As a result, a number
of Angolan citizens born in Cabinda, and migrants who claimed to hold legal
status as residents, were arrested during roundups and stripped of personal
documents, such as birth certificates or receipts of identity card requests.[105] For
example, a 31-year-old Angolan man told Human Rights Watch that immigration
officials and border police agents arrested him in the street during a roundup
on September 21, 2009, alleging the document he presented was forged.

They were arresting people in the street. The DEFA and
border police asked me for documents and I gave them the receipt (recibo)
for my identity card request. They started to make things complicated.
‘This receipt is false’. Later, at Nto, DEFA interrogated
everybody. I said I was from Belize. They didn’t want to know. The
following day we were transported in vans to Pinto da Fonseca to be deported,
but the men on the other side didn’t accept me, so I was taken back and
put in the Cadeia Civil prison. I stayed there for four days. There were other
Angolans there like me. After four days I was released, but they never gave my
receipt back.[106]

In another documented case, a 50-year-old man from the DRC
who claimed to have acquired Angolan citizenship in 1996, told Human Rights
Watch that he spent three weeks at the Cadeia Civil prison in Cabinda in
September and October 2009, and eventually paid the migration officials $4,000
in total before he was released, along with his sister and daughter. He said he
was arrested after immigration officials and border police had confiscated his
personal documents because the papers “look suspicious.”[107]

Two Cabindans told Human Rights Watch in August 2011 that in
a recent wave of expulsions of irregular migrants, agents of the Rapid
Intervention Police, National Police, fiscal police, Angolan Armed Forces and
immigration officials arrested supposed migrants in roundups all over the
city’s peripheral residential areas. Often these officials entered homes
forcibly to arrest supposed irregular migrants, in violation of Angola’s
constitution which protects the inviolability of the home. [108] An
Angolan lawyer told Human Rights Watch that on August 7, 2011, two agents of
the PIR armed with AK-47s together with two agents from the fiscal police and
one immigration official forcibly entered his house and threatened to beat his
wife and children:

My wife called me asking for help because agents of the
Rapid Intervention Police, fiscal police and immigration officials had forced
entry to the house and threatened to beat her and my children. When I arrived
at my home and asked them what they were doing there and whether they had a
search warrant, they didn’t have any and just told me to shut my mouth.
They said they were looking for a Congolese who was hiding in my house.[109]

In Dundo and Nzage, Lunda Norte, in July 2009, residents of
a camp for refugees and asylum seekers told Human Rights Watch that members of
the Angolan Armed Forces raided the camp on May 24, 2009, raped a number of
women in their houses, and systematically tore up or confiscated the residents’
documents[110] during
door-to-door arrest operations. Immigration officials at the detention center to
which they were transferred, eventually recognized their status as refugees and
asylum-seekers and released them from custody but did not return the confiscated
documents.[111]

In addition, and contrary to guarantees in Angolan law and
international human rights standards, Angolan officials have systematically
violated basic property rights of migrants during expulsion operations. Most
commonly, Angolan security forces and immigration officials have stripped
migrants of their money, valuable clothing, and other belongings upon arrest or
arrival at the detention facility without ever returning the property or
compensating them. In four cases documented in Kamako in June 2011, migrants
expelled from Lunda Norte claimed that Angolan security forces looted their
homes.[112]

Refugees and asylum seekers interviewed in Dundo and Nzage,
Lunda Norte, in July 2009 told Human Rights Watch that FAA soldiers on May 24,
2009 pillaged the camp. All residents that were present in the camp were taken
into temporary custody at an open detention center at the riverside. When they
returned to the camp a few days
later, they found their houses empty.[113]
“They even took the children’s clothes,” several women told
Human Rights Watch. [114]

Several victims of expulsions in Kamako in 2011 and in Lunda
Norte in 2009, told Human Rights Watch that their Angolan neighbors joined the
security forces in looting the homes of migrants with impunity.[115]

VI. Inadequate Response to Allegations
of Serious Abuse

The Angolan
government has not adequately addressed past and current allegations of serious
abuse against irregular migrants during expulsions from Angola.

In 2004 as the first large scale expulsion operations were
under way, the Congolese government formally protested the inhumane treatment
of its citizens at the hands of the Angolan security forces, leading Angola's
interior minister Osvaldo Serra Van-Dunem to issue a public apology which recognized
that certain abuses had indeed occurred.[116]

However, the admission was not accompanied by improvements
in the behavior of the Angolan security forces during subsequent expulsions.
That apology was the last public acknowledgment of abuse by the Angolan
government. In the intervening years, the government of Angola has reacted to
allegations of severe human rights violations during mass expulsion operations
from the United Nations and the African Union with public denials in the media,
and by promising to investigate the allegations by setting up so-called
“multi-sectorial commissions,” composed by officials of different
ministries.

In May 2008, the African Commission on Human and
Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) ruled that Angola, during the expulsion operation
in 2004, had violated a number of provisions of the African Charter to which
Angola is party, including the right to dignity, to appeal, to due process and
to property, and the prohibition of arbitrary arrest and mass expulsion. [117]

In 2004, 14 Gambians who were expelled from Angola lodged a
complaint at the ACHPR. Angola ignored the commission when it asked
the Angolan government to respond to the allegations. In September 2008 the
president of Angola established a commission to prepare a response to the
Gambians' complaint. [118]At the time of writing the Angolan
government commission has not published any report about its activities.

United Nations agencies, as well as UN special rapporteurs,
have over the years issued a number of reports and communications and wrote
private letters to the Angolan government[119]
raising concerns of repeated allegations of serious human rights violations
during mass expulsions of irregular migrants from Angola without response from
the Angolan government.

In December 2009, the UN special rapporteur on violence
against women, its causes and consequences, jointly with the special rapporteur
on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, wrote
a letter to the Angolan government raising concerns at reports of human rights
violations including sexual violence during mass expulsions in 2009. [120]

In February and March 2011, the UN Secretary-General’s
special representative on sexual violence in conflict, Margot Wallström,
visited Kamako (DRC) and Luanda and Lunda Norte (Angola), to examine
allegations of sexual violence. In a Joint Communiqué issued with the UN
after Wallström’s visit to Luanda, the government promised to
implement a number of preventive measures. This included a commitment to
reinforce a zero-tolerance policy in the code of conduct of its security forces
prohibiting sexual abuse, to investigate alleged violations and punish the
perpetrators, and to facilitate assessment missions and the observation of
expulsions by the IOM and UN, granting those agencies regular access to places
of detention.[121]

In March 2011, in response to an additional letter sent to
Angola on March 3, 2011 by the UN special rapporteur on the human rights of
migrants, jointly with the UN special rapporteur on torture and cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment or punishment and the UN special rapporteur on violence
against women, the Angolan government responded by stating that the president
of Angola had expressed concerns about the reported allegations, and had set up
a multidisciplinary commission to investigate the matter. The Angolan
government also stated that the commission, after visiting Lunda Norte, Cabinda
and Zaire provinces and speaking with the border post authorities,
“considered the allegations unclear and inaccurate.” The commission
concluded that “no facts exist that prove the allegations, but rather the
constant violations of the Angolan border by DRC citizens.” The Angolan
government merely admitted having verified “one isolated case of
rape” perpetrated by a member of the armed forces against a Congolese
woman, which “was already addressed through the courts.”[122]The government promised that the final
results of the multidisciplinary commission would be published. [123]At time of writing, this has not been done.

In March 2011, the Angolan Foreign Affairs Minister Georges
Chikoty, following a meeting with Margot Wallström in Luanda in March
2011, denied all allegations of rape in the Angolan media. “It was
determined that there has never been rape of Congolese immigrants,” he
told the state-owned news agency Angop. According to the media report,
Chikoti added that political parties were using bombastic and unfounded
allegations merely for political purposes.[124] However, upon his visit to Angola in February
2012, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon reiterated concerns about reports of
rape during expulsions of migrants from Angola. [125]

The Angolan government
has officially maintained its denial of allegations of sexual violence and
impunity against its officials during expulsions of irregular migrants.
Angola’s Interior Minister, Sebastião Martins, told Human Rights
Watch in December 2011 that “recently three or four cases of sexual
abuse” had been communicated to the Attorney General, but that there were
many cases in which migrant women consented to having sexual relations with
security agents upon false promises of release, and only later complained they
were raped, “out of frustration.” The minister also blamed DRC
authorities for lack of response to regular invitations to assist expulsions on
the spot and to bring in alleged victims and eyewitnesses of sexual violence to
testify in Angolan courts.[126]

However, Angola’s
interior minister said in December 2011 that significant investments were being
made to upgrade detention facilities by building new “detention centers
for illegal migrants” in several provinces; and that cooperation was
being strengthened with UN agencies, including the IOM, for training of police
agents and immigration officials, as well as with the ICRC, in order to prevent
sexual and other violence against irregular migrants in custody. “Our
main challenge is to protect national security while respecting the rights of
migrants,” he told Human Rights Watch.[127] On December 17, 2011, Foreign Affairs Minister
Chikoty, after a further meeting with Wallström, in Kampala, Uganda,
reiterated his government’s promises to coordinate future expulsions of
irregular migrants with the UN.[128]

Since 2004, the government of DRC has regularly approached
the Angolan authorities with its concerns about the poor treatment of expelled
Congolese migrants. Following its initial objections to “Operation
Brilhante,” it reiterated its concerns during a bilateral meeting with
officials of the Angolan government in Kinshasa on May 19, 2004.[129]
Congolese officials reminded their Angolan counterparts of their obligations
under the Convention on the Establishment and Circulation of Persons and Goods
signed by the governments of Angola, DRC, and the Republic of Congo
(Brazzaville) in 1999. In 2007, during a visit by President Joseph Kabila to
Luanda, the Congolese authorities again raised the issue with their Angolan
counterparts.[130]

In 2009, in an official reaction to the September 2009
launching by Angola, of “Operation Explosion”[131]in the northern provinces of Cabinda and
Zaire, the Congolese government took reciprocal action, issuing an order to the
Congolese immigration services to expel Angolan nationals from Bas-Congo.[132]
Reciprocal deportations began on October 6, 2009.[133]
An Angolan delegation then traveled to Kinshasa, and on October 13 the two
countries agreed to end expulsions.[134]

Generally, there has been a lack of transparency in the
interaction between the governments of DRC and Angola over the issue of
expulsions. While much of the diplomatic interaction between the two countries
in recent years has taken place in regularly scheduled bilateral meetings, the
subjects discussed and decisions reached during these exchanges are rarely made
public and do not appear to have led to concrete proposals on expulsions of
irregular migrants and how to end abuses against Congolese migrants by Angolan
security agents, as well as irregular immigration into Angola. Human Rights
Watch repeatedly approached Congolese officials attempting to obtain agreements
relating to expulsions signed in 2004 and 2009, without success.[135]

DRC-based humanitarian actors and UN officials also
expressed to Human Rights Watch their frustration with the DRC government's
position regarding attempts by external actors and the international community
to draw attention to the issue of expulsions, noting that while these efforts
are privately encouraged by government officials they are publicly declared an
inappropriate intrusion in bilateral relations between DRC and Angola.[136]

Acknowledgements

The report was researched and written by a Human Rights
Watch researcher and a consultant. It was edited by Tiseke Kasambala, senior
researcher in the Africa Division; Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior researcher in
the Africa Division; Agnes Odhiambo, researcher in the Women’s Rights
Division; Gerry Simpson, senior researcher in the Refugee Division; Bill
Frelick, director of the Refugee Division; Juliane Kippenberg, senior
researcher in the Children’s Rights Division; Babatunde Olugboji, deputy
program director; and Clive Baldwin, senior legal advisor. Lindsey Hutchison,
associate in the Africa Division, coordinated the production of this report, as
well as provided editing and formatting assistance. Grace Choi, publications
director, Kathy Mills, publication specialist, and Fitzroy Hepkins,
administrative manager, prepared the report for publication.

Human Rights Watch acknowledges with gratitude the
contribution provided by officials of UN agencies, international organizations
and nongovernmental organizations, human rights activists, members of churches,
officials of the governments of Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo,
and all the victims who agreed to be interviewed for this report, particularly
survivors of sexual violence.

We owe special gratitude to those individuals who gave us
invaluable and unfailing support during our field and follow- up research.
Particularly, the Comitato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo dei Popoli (CISP) in
the DRC, and Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS) in Angola, deserve our gratitude for
their support and insight. We also thank NOVIB for the funding that made this
research possible.

[1]Human
Rights Watch uses the definition of a child as any person under the age of 18,
in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

[2]
This general justification for mass expulsions has been reiterated by the
Angolan government since 2003.

[3]Zaire is the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s
previous official name (1971-1997).

[13]
The Pooled Fund combines the donor financing of UN agencies and the majority of
humanitarian NGOs operating in DRC. Its resources are managed communally,
allowing for rapid, coordinated responses to shifting needs.

[14]
Among those migrants expelled from Angola, CISP and their local partners along
the border counted 33,876 men, 14,541 women, 3,177 boys and 2,544 girls. Most expulsions of migrants (40,331) were recorded in Kasai
Occidental, bordering Angola’s diamond-rich provinces. “Expulsés
d’Angola”, CISP Briefing, Kinshasa, January 15, 2012. According to Antonio Mangia Jr, protection coordinator of CISP in
Kinshasa, DRC, the numbers of expelled migrants only came to be uniformly disaggregated
by gender and age after the initial phase of the monitoring project. Human
Rights Watch phone interview with Antonio Mangia Jr, March 1, 2012.

[15]Incidents of sexual and gender-based violence recorded by
CISP, include sexual violence as well as humiliating vaginal and anal body
searches. According to CISP, from the 3,770 reported cases of sexual and
gender-based violence, 2,526 victims were women, 316 girls and 928 men.

[17]The
prison of Condueji, or Conduege, in Dundo, Lunda Norte, used to serve as main
provincial prison until the newly built prison of Kakanda was inaugurated in
2010. Since, the old prison has been used as transit center during expulsion
operations of irregular migrants. In 2009, the Angolan authorities had set up
an open detention camp at the riverside near Nzage, commonly referred to as
Ilha [Portuguese word for island], where migrants were held in custody
prior to their expulsion. Human Rights Watch interviews with victims of
expulsions in Kamako, DRC, June 2011, and in Dundo and Nzage, Lunda Norte,
Angola July 2009.

[18]
Human Rights Watch interviews with DRC government officials, members of local
civil society organizations, and expelled migrants in Kamako, June 2011.

[19]Human
Rights Watch interviews with victims of expulsions in Muanda, May 2011, and in
Cabinda, November 2009.

[21]Human
Rights Watch interview with DGM officials and members of local nongovernmental
organizations in Muanda and Kamako, DRC, May and June, 2011.

[22]
Human Rights Watch researchers visited one of these border market days in the
Congolese town of Kamako in June 2011. Congolese authorities interviewed said
that such markets were essential to the region's economic well-being.

[23]
For a definition of “smuggling”, see Smuggling Protocol, art. 3a.
For a definition of “trafficking” see Trafficking Protocol, art.
3a.

[24]
Human Rights Watch interviews with ANR officials, local representative of the
territorial administration, migrants and members of civil society, Kamako, June
2011.

[25]
Human Rights Watch interviews with DGM official in Kamonia, and with ANR
official, local residents and Congolese migrants in Kamako, June, 2011.

[27]
Human Rights Watch interviews with ANR official and members of local civil
society, Kamako, June 2011. Yet, Human Rights Watch was not able to corroborate
concrete cases of sexual abuse by tchobresseurs.

[28]
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), adopted December
16, 1966, G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 52, U.N. Doc.
A/6316 (1966), 999 U.N.T.S. 171, entered into force March 23, 1976, ratified by
Angola January 10, 1992. The ICCPR prohibits torture and other cruel, inhuman,
or degrading treatment (art.7) and protects women’s right to be free from
discrimination based on sex (arts 2(1) and 26).

[32]
In its response to communication 292/2004 filed by the Institute for Human
Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) on behalf of 14 Gambian nationals
expelled from Angola in May 2004, the Africa Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights concluded that Angola violated the prohibition
of mass expulsion, because the victims were part of a larger group on
non-nationals of different nationalities to which fundamental rights of due
process were negated. See Activity Report of the African Commission on Human
and People’s Rights in conformity with article 54 of the African Charter
on Human and People’s Rights, presented at the Thirteenth Ordinary
Session in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, June 24 – 28, 2008, p.86-107
(Communication 292/2004 Institute from Human Rights and Development in Africa /
Republic of Angola), para 66-70.

[33]African
[Banjul] Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, adopted June 27, 1981, OAU Doc.
CAB/LEG/67/3 rev. 5, 21 I.L.M. 58 (1982), entered into force October 21, 1986,
ratified by Angola March 2, 1990; African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of
the Child, OAU Doc. CAB/LEG/24.9/49 (1990), entered into force November 29,
1999, ratified by Angola January 11, 1992; Protocol to the African Charter on
Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, adopted by the 2nd
Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the Union, Maputo, September 13, 2000,
CAB/LEG/66.6, entered into force November 25, 2005, ratified by Angola January
22, 2007.

[34]See UN Human Rights Committee, General Comment 31. Nature of the
General Legal Obligations of State parties to the Covenant, U.N. Doc.
CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.13/ para 15. See also the Updated Set of Principles for the
Protection and Promotion of Human Rights through Action to Combat Impunity
(“Impunity Principles”), U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/2005/102/Add.1, February
8, 2005, adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights in Resolution
E/CN.4/2005/81, April 15, 2005, principle I.

[35]Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Convention
against Torture), adopted December 10, 1984, G.A. res. 39/46, annex, 39 U.N.
GAOR Supp. (No. 51) at 197, U.N. Doc. A/39/51 (1984), entered into force June
26, 1987. Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel,
Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, adopted on 18 December 2002 at the
fifty-seventh session of the General Assembly of the United Nations by
resolution A/RES/57/199, entered into force on June 22, 2006.

[36]
International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers
and Members of Their Families (Migrant Workers Convention), adopted December
18, 1990, G.A. Res. 45/158, annex, 45 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 49A) at 262, U.N.
Doc. A/45/49 (1990), entered into force July 1, 2003.

[43]
United Nations General Assembly: Letter dated 3 May 2007 from the Permanent
Representative of Angola to the United Nations addressed to the President of
the General Assembly, http://www.upr-info.org/IMG/pdf/angola_pledge_2007.pdf; United
Nations General Assembly: Note verbale dated 5 May 2010 from the
Permanent Mission of Angola to the United Nations addressed to the Secretariat,
http://www.unelections.org/files/GA_%28A.64.775%29AngolaHRCCandi_7May10.pdf
(assessed on February 19, 2012).

[46]
Law on the Legal Regime of Foreign Citizens (Law 02/07) entered into force on
August 31, 2007, arts. 3.1. and 8. The law was later renamed as Juridical
System of Foreigners in the Republic of Angola, http://www.sme.ao/attachments/article/234/Law%20No.%202-07%20of%2031%20May.pdf
(assessed on February 19, 2012). Regulations of the 2007 law (Regulation
on the Legal System of Foreigners, presidential decree 108/11) were enacted by
presidential decree on May 25, 2011, http://www.sme.ao/attachments/article/189/Presidential%20Decree%20No.%20108-11%20of%2025%20May.pdf
(assessed on February 4, 2012)

[63]
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, who visited Condueji prison in
2007, noted that the prison facility was “unsuitable for
detention.” United Nations General Assembly, Human Rights Council:
Report of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Addendum–Mission to
Angola, A/HRC/7/4/Add. 4, February 29, 2008.

[64]
Human Rights Watch interviews in Kamako on June 6, 2011, with 45-year-old
Congolese woman who was expelled in May 2011, and with 32-year-old Congolese
woman, who was expelled on May 21, 2011.

[65]
Human Rights Watch interview in Muanda, May 26, 2011, with 22-year-old
Congolese woman, who was expelled in March 2011 in Soyo, Zaire province. She
identified the prison where she was held for two days as the Comando run
by the FAA, situated close to the river.

[66]
Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on June 6, 2011, with 29-year-old Congolese
woman, who was expelled on May 25, 2011 in Kamako. The abuses she reported were
committed in Condueji prison, Dundo, Lunda Norte, where she was held for five
days.

[67] Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on
June 7, 2011 with a 30-year-old Congolese woman, who was expelled on May 15,
2011 in Kamako. She reported that this happened at Condueji prison in Dundo,
Lunda Norte, where she was held for five days.

[68]
Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on June 8, 2011 with 19-year-old
Congolese, who was expelled on June 2, 2011. The sexual violence she reported
took place at Condueji prison, in Dundo, Lunda Norte, where she was held for
two days.

[69]
Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on June 7, 2011 with 27-year-old
Congolese woman, who was expelled on May 27, 2011 together with her 1-year-old
child. The abuses she described were committed in an unidentified prison in
Dundo, Lunda Norte, where she was detained for three days.

[70]Human Rights Watch interview with 36-year-old Congolese man in
Kamako, who was expelled on May 25, 2011. The abuses he witnessed were
committed in an unidentified prison in Calonda, Lunda Norte, where he was held
during five days, until being transported to Condueji prison in Dundo.

[71]
Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on June 6, 2011, with 30-year-old
Congolese woman who was expelled on May 15, 2011, in Kamako along with her
husband and her three children (two, five and seven years old). The reported
abuses happened at the Condueji prison in Dundo, Lunda Norte, where she was held
during five days.

[72]
Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on June 6, 2011, with 23-year-old
Congolese woman who was expelled on June 2, 2011, in Kamako, along with a
nine months old baby and a three years old child. She reported that this
happened at the Condueji prison in Dundo, Lunda Norte, where she was held for
two days.

[73]
Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on June 6, 2011, with a
32-year-old Congolese woman who was expelled along with her two children (one
and eight years old) on May 21, 2011. The abuses she reported were committed at
a police jail in Lukapa, which the victim only identified as Unidade
(“Unit”).

[74]
Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on June 6, 2011, with 15-year-old
Congolese girl who was expelled on May 25, 2011. The abuses reported by the
victim and her 27-year-old aunt, whom Human Rights Watch also interviewed, were
committed at Condueji prison, Dundo, Lunda Norte, where they were held for
three days.

[75]Human Rights Watch interview in with 27-year-old Congolese
woman living in the Chico Guerreiro refugee camp near Nzage, Lunda Norte, on
July 23, 2009. She was arrested on May 24, 2009 by members of the FAA.

[76]
Human Rights Watch interview with Dr. Patrick Mavungo at the Muanda central
hospital, in Muanda on May 26, 2011. The doctor who oversees sexual violence
cases at the central Muanda hospital, said only six to seven cases are reported
per month, including cases that occurred locally, and most of those cases are
reported by the local police where the victim’s families only turn to if
other arrangements for compensation within the community had been unsuccessful.

[77]The
medical report from February 9, 2011, of the general central Muanda hospital,
gave septic shock as a result of the abdominal infection and bleeding caused by
sexual violence as the reason for Lomboto Natalie’s death. Flavien Futi,
coordinator of the local NGO Centre Congolais pour la Protection de la Nature
(CCPN), who interviewed the victim upon her arrival in Muanda, said the victim
was pregnant, and miscarried after having been raped by five Angolan police
agents. Human Rights Watch interview with Flavien Futi in Muanda on May 25,
2011.

[78]
Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on June 6, 2011, with 40-year-old
Congolese woman [, who was expelled on June 4, 2011. She was referring to
Condueji prison in Dundo, Lunda Norte.

[80]While a number of those interviewed confirmed that shootings occurred
during these roundups, it is unclear whether miners were targeted or if these
security agents were simply firing in the air. Several claimed these raids on
mines had resulted in deaths among the miners – whether through bullet
wounds or drowning – but Human Rights Watch was not able to corroborate
such allegations. In Kamako in June 2011, Human Rights Watch documented 13
roundups in the diamond mines in Lunda Norte.

[81] Human Rights Watch
interview in Kamako on June 8, 2011 with a 28-year-old Congolese man who was
expelled in May 2011 in Kamako.

[82] Human Rights Watch
interview in Kamako on June 6, 2011 with a 36-year-old Congolese man who was
expelled in March 2011 in Kamako. Human Rights Watch took pictures of his
injuries.

[83]
Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on June 5, 2011 with 45-year-old man who
was arrested at a diamond mine in Calumbia, municipality of Chitato. He was
later transferred to the Condueji prison in Dundo and expelled two days later.

[84]
Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on June 6, 2011 with a 26-year-old woman
who was expelled along with her three children in February 2011 in Kamako. One
child, aged 4 months, later died.

[85]A border police unit close to the border post of Yema in
Cabinda, Angola.

[86]
Human Rights Watch interview with a 22-year-old Angolan man in Cabinda,
November 17, 2009. He gave Human Rights Watch a picture of his injuries that he
took on September 22, 2009, one day after the incident on September 21, 2009.

[87]
Human Rights Watch interviews with refugees and asylum seekers in Dundo and the
refugee camp in the Chico Guerreio neighbourhood in Nzage, July 23-28, 2009.

[88]
Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on June 6, 2011 with a 30-year-old
Congolese woman, who was arrested along with her daughter while selling peanuts
in the market in the town of Nzage on May 23, 2011. The
assaults described above were committed by SME agents as the migrants were
being transferred from Nzage to Dundo. She was expelled following two days in
detention.

[89]
Human Rights Watch interview with a 26-year-old Congolese woman in Kamako on
June 6, 2011. She was expelled on May 29, 2011.

[90]
Human Rights Watch interview with a 30-year-old Congolese man in Kamako
on June 6, 2011.

[91]Human Rights Watch documented eight cases of body cavity
searches – three at Condueji prison, and the other cases in unspecified
jails and mines in Calonda, Dundo and Sombuege.

[92]
Human Rights Watch interview in Kamako on June 8, 2011 with a 36-year-old
Congolese man who was arrested in Kalonda then held at the Condueji
prison in Dundo.

[93]Human Rights Watch interview with a 23-year-old Congolese man
in Cabinda, November 15, 2011. He was expelled in late September to Muanda and
returned to Cabinda two weeks later.

[94]
Human Rights Watch interview with an Angolan eyewitness also held at the
same prison, Cabinda, November 14, 2009. In November 2009, Human Rights Watch
interviewed several former detainees from different nationalities who were
victims of that incident. According to their statements, the authorities
delayed their deportation after the moratorium of mutual expulsions declared by
the DRC and Angola earlier in October 2009.

[95]
A compact paste made from pounded manioc and water, a staple food in the
region.

[96]In interviews with
humanitarian workers from Médecins Sans Frontières during
expulsion operations in 2007, expelled migrants made allegations of summary
executions committed by Angolan security forces. In some allegations, victims
were placed in plastic sacks and thrown into a river. Others allegedly died of
exhaustion or as a result of harsh treatment. “Les Femmes Temoignent: Cent Femmes
Racontent leur Calvaire Angolais”, Médecins Sans Frontières report, December 2007. More recently, a report covering the period 2010
to early 2011 compiled by UNPOL, the UN's police force, based in DRC claims to
have documented the deaths of four Congolese migrants while in Angolan custody.
"Fiche d'Analyse," Police MONUSCO Operations report, July 2011. Since
establishing its monitoring project in late March 2011, the Italian
humanitarian NGO CISP has regularly documented, through interviews with
expelled migrants, the deaths of Congolese in Angola or in the DRC shortly
after expulsion. These incidents include deaths due to harsh treatment,
suicide, and injuries inflicted during sexual assault.

[97]
Restricted access to mining areas in Lunda Norte province, where many of these
incidents are reported to have occurred, has made it even more difficult to
independently verify these incidents. .

[98]
From January 7 to 10, 2011, an inter-agency mission including UN
agencies, CISP, and the Catholic relief organization Caritas, visited Kamako
and Kamisuta in Kasai-Occidental to investigate an incident that allegedly
occurred in a diamond mine in the Angolan town of Kalonda, near the border.
Through interviews with witnesses, the mission was able to establish that a
December 2010 raid by Angolan security forces (Chacal unit of the
border police, PIR, FAA, Naval Force, and “Telele” – Human
Rights Watch believes “Telele” to be a name for the well-known
Angola private security company called Teleservice) led to the deaths of an
unknown number of migrants, either through gunshot wounds or drowning. Migrants
held at a detention facility in Kalonda told the inter-agency mission that they
had been removed from their cells to bury 18 bodies, some of them showing
gunshot wounds. However, the mission could not confirm reports of sightings of
around 40 bodies floating in the Tshikapa River near Kamisuta around the time
of the alleged incident. "Mission Conjointe d'Evaluation:
Humanitaires/Gouvernement Provincial dans le Territoire de Tshikapa a Kamako et
Kamisuta", OCHA, January 2011.

[99]
In its April 2011 report, CISP documented an alleged incident on April
14, during which some 30 irregular diamond miners drowned or were shot dead by
Angolan security forces during a raid on a mine not far from the border. CISP
partners photographed seven bodies showing bullet wounds. “Rapport
d’incident”, CISP, April 17, 2011.

[100]Human
Rights Watch is only aware of two second-hand accounts – one of drownings
and another of a death from shooting – in Kamako in June 2011, and was
unable to corroborate these accounts. In total, six expelled migrants
interviewed by Human Rights Watch in Muanda and Kamako in May and June 2011
claimed to have knowledge of deaths among fellow migrants, either during the
initial roundups and raids or in detention. Human Rights Watch was unable to
corroborate any of those allegations.

[101] Rafael Marques, Diamantes de Sangue. Corrupção e
Tortura em Angola (Lisbon, 2011). On November
14, 2011, Rafael Marques filed a complaint at the Angolan Attorney
General’s office in Luanda against 17 officials - including 10 generals
of the Angolan Armed Forces-, for allegedly being responsible for acts of
torture, rape and killings.

[102]
Most migrants told Human Rights Watch in Kamako in June 2011 they had entered
Angola illegally, paying local facilitators, so-called tchobresseurs ,
who smuggled them across the border. While in Muanda in May 2011 some migrants
claimed having entered with a laissez-passer that is valid for three days only,
which were long overdue.

[103]
Human Rights Watch interview with Congolese migrants in Muanda and Kamako, May
to June 2011.

[104]Human Rights Watch interviews with victims and eyewitnesss of
expulsions in Cabinda, November 2009.

[105]There has been no census in Angola since 1975 and many
Angolans, particularly in rural areas, do not have an identity card. The
government’s voter registration campaign carried out for the 2008
elections, as well as the ongoing voter registration for the 2012 elections,
has not been accompanied by measures to ensure that all citizens have identity
cards.

[109]Human Rights watch phone interview with Arão Tempo,
lawyer and representative of the Bar Association in Cabinda on August 10, 2011.
Human Rights Watch has a copy of the complaint filed by the lawyer at the
Attorney General’s office in Cabinda on August 8, 2011.

[110] Most of the camp’s residents told Human Rights
Watch that they were unable to recover the receipts (recibo) presented
to the Angolan Armed Forces when they raided the camp. These receipts were
issued by the immigration services (SME) to asylum seekers requesting a refugee
card from COREDA (Comité de Reconhecimento do Direito a Asilo/Committee
for the Recognition of the Right to Asylum). COREDA is a government structure
composed of the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry for Social Affairs, the
Ministry of Interior, and the Immigration Services (SME), with the UNHCR as
observer. Some of them claimed having presented a COREDA card. According
to an official of the Jesuit Refugee Services who have assisted asylum seekers
and refugees in Angola, recovering such a document presents considerable
challenges. Human Rights Watch interviews with Andre Domingos Neto in Dundo in
July 2009, and on November 28, 2011 in Luanda.

[111]Human Rights Watch interviews with asylum seekers and refugees
from the Chico Guerreiro camp in Nzage and Dundo, and with local staff of the
Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS) in Dundo, in July 2009. JRS assists refugees and
asylum seekers and intervenes on their behalf with the local authorities.

[112]
Human Rights Watch interviews with four migrants in Kamako, June 6-8, 2011.

[113]Willy Kilumba, the elder counsellor of the refugee camp with
693 residents from different nationalities told Human Rights Watch this was the
third time Angolan Armed Forces pillaged the camp: the first time during
Operation Brilhante on April 14, 2004, and the second time in June 2008. Based
on a list of complaints from the camp residents, he estimated the damage from
the pillage at $31,000. Human Rights Watch interviews at the Chico Guerreiro
refugee camp, Nzage, Lunda Norte, July 23 and 28, 2009.

[117]Articles
1, 2, 5, 6, 7 (1) (a), 12 (4), 12 (5), 14 and 15 of the African Charter. See
Activity Report of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights in
conformity with article 54 of the African Charter on Human and People’s
Rights, presented at the Thirteenth Ordinary Session in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt,
June 24 – 28, 2008, p.86-107 (Communication 292/2004 Institute for Human
Rights and Development in Africa / Republic of Angola),
http://www.achpr.org/english/Decison_Communication/Angola/Comm.%20292.pdf

[118]Decree
25/08 from September 2008, published in Diário da República on
September 19, 2008, quoted in “Luanda responde com silêncio”,
Novo Jornal, July 17, 2009.

[119]
For example, in August 2009 the UN resident coordinator in Angola addressed a
non-public letter to the Angolan Ministry of Foreign Affairs raising concerns
at serious human rights violations during expulsions from Lunda Norte in May
and June 2009. The Foreign Affairs Minister responded that the president had
been notified and an investigation would take place. Human Rights Watch
interview with UN official in Luanda, November 5, 2009.

[120]
United Nations General Assembly, Human Rights Council, Report of the
special rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Rashida
Manjoo, Addendum, Communications to and from Governments,
A/HRC/14/22/Add.1, June 2, 2010, paras 33-40.

[121]Joint
Communiqué of the Government of Angola and the United Nations, March 14,
2011. See also Margot Wallström’s statement to the United Nations Security
Council, April 14, 2011,
http://www.stoprapenow.org/uploads/files/SRSGSVC_Statement_SC_April_14_2011.pdf
(assessed on February 19, 2011)

[122]United
Nations General Assembly, Human Rights Council, Report of the special rapporteur
on the human rights of migrants, Jorge Bustamante, Addendum, Communications to
and from Governments, A/HRC/17/33/Add.1, May 17, 2011, paras 16-22. Human
Rights Watch was unable to verify the particular court case referred to or its
outcome.

[123]
United Nations General Assembly, Human Rights Council, Report of the Special
Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Jorge Bustamante, Seventeenth
Session, Agenda Item 3, Addendum, Communications to and from Governments,
A/HRC/17/33/Add.1, May 17, 2011, para 15.

[127]Human Rights Watch interview with Angolan Interior Minister
Sebastião Martins in Luanda, December 1, 2011. An official from IOM
confirmed to Human Rights Watch that the IOM had undertaken sporadic visits to
Lunda Norte, however such visits have been insufficient in number and length to
effectively monitor a broad network of official and temporary detention
facilities which are being used during expulsions in wide areas. Human Rights
Watch interviews with officials from IOM in Luanda, November 22, 2011.

[135]Human
Rights Watch sent the DRC foreign ministry five emails between August 1 and 18,
2011, and spoke with a senior ministry official by telephone on three occasions
during the same period in an attempt to obtain documents and further
clarification regarding the Congolese response to the expulsions.

[136]
In an example of this, in December 2010 DRC Minister of Communications
Lambert Mende made the following statement to UN- supported Radio Okapi:
“There are people who want to make work for themselves here. We know
where we need assistance. They take advantage to dramatize the situation. We
have dealt with the situation in a bilateral framework with our neighbors. They
are happy to throw fuel on the fire. That must stop.”
http://radiookapi.net/actualite/2010/12/31/kinshasa-l%E2%80%99expulsion-des-congolais-d%E2%80%99angola-se-poursuit-a-un-rythme-accelere-soutient-ocha/
(accessed on February 19, 2012).